During eleven years I have worked at this book, collecting its materials in more or less desultory fashion in leisure of other work, but of late I have been able to devote myself almost exclusively to it. Nevertheless, a sense of depression attends the con trast between the dreams of fifteen years ago and the tame reality which is all that these years have been able to produce. Cheerfully enough would I spend another four years, if I saw, in any reasonable faith, a hope of thereby making it appreciably approach that early ideal. Yet it is not mine to judge it. And I leave it to find its own degree of usefulness. Sincerity of effort may have power to atone for much of inherent feebleness.